You're sitting in a classroom. You studied all month for a test and the teacher passes out the papers.
Just when you're about to finish, out of the corner of your eye you see the new kid, who just moved to the neighborhood and is sitting a few seats in front of you, looking over and copying someone else's work. What nerve!
What do you do?
(1) After class, once everyone's left, you mention this to the teacher who will address it with the student directly, causing minimal fuss
(2) Since he's the new kid and you're quite popular, you organize everyone else in the classroom to get revenge. You have the bigger kids beat up on him in gym class. You spray paint "CHEATER" to his locker. You have the loud kids taunt him as he's walking from place to place. You ruin his reputation with all the girls in the school assuring he won't have a date to the big dance. You get some people to prank call his house, and harass him so much that he gets driven out of town
While both methods will ensure some sort of "justice" the problem with method #2 is that it encourages people to do things that are either on par with or worse than the original problem.
Now look what the poor teacher has to deal with:
(1) She has to deal with the cheater
(2) She has to send the bullies to detention
(3) She has to have a meeting with the girls and a counselor to tell them to stop spreading nasty rumors
(4) She has to answer to the parents who keep getting prank called
(5) She has to call the janitor to clean up the graffiti
(6) She has to gather the entire class to the auditorium to listen to a speech about how to handle problems responsibly
Suddenly, the innocent teacher's life becomes orders of magnitude more complicated.
The moral of the story is that we have processes in place for plagiarism and while by stirring up a ruckus you think you're hurting the plagiarist, you're really only hurting the community and the poor teacher who has to sort through everything.
This isn't directed to any one member. It's something that's been happening for as long as theOtaku has been online.
